A Stranger's Life
by FallenShateiel
Summary: A seven part series.... About Moody's life.. There is slash with Kingsely Shacklebolt and Alastor Moody seven parts...
1. What They Don't Know

Title: What They Don't Know.

Author: FallenShateiel

Rating: PG

Pairing: Kingsley Shacklebolt/ Alastor Moody

Summary: Don't forget to take the notes.

A/N: This is my first fic about Moody and so I used it mainly to try and get the feel of his character.

-----------------------------

He remembers the nights that weren't so dark.

When the simple rainfall outside the window didn't cause heaviness to fall on his chest. Hammering away until he gets up from his bed to see if it really is just rainfall.

He feels old.

Especially at times like these.

When there are no 'pretend monsters underneath the bed'… Because there are monsters under the bed. Sitting on the other side of the table.

There are monsters that don't bare their teeth because there are no teeth to bare.

His foot stomps on the floor as he moves around. His wooden leg 'thumps'… There are days when he thinks that there's no way that he could be this old. This old and this pathetic… He remembers days when he wasn't.

----------------------

"Alastor. C'mon man you know you are the best in field." The smile is as big, widening the cheeks across that chubby face.

The man across him with the scarred face laughs.

"Damn right I am." He lifts his lager and they smash them together in a feeling of good toast.

The laughter of all those around them is great.

The year is great.

------------------------------

When he looks in the in mirror he sees the marks of a thousand different hexes, jinxes and curses. The marks are deep and beyond anything that he would have ever thought a single man could carry without having the face cave in.

Instead he takes a glass and inspects it. A 'squelch' noise is heard before he plops a blue electric bulb in it. The likes of which bob up, and down erratically for a few moments.

The sounds of hail on the windowpane make him tense for a few moments before he sighs, shaking his salt and pepper head.

------------------------

There were things people said about the man whose reputation was great.

The respect of which commanded the attentions of perhaps the most brilliant and powerful wizard of the age. Albus Dumbledore.

His pure white beard swaying side to side as he walks up to the Auror.

"Hello, Alastor." The slight bow of the aged wizard, who seemed to be forever old, forever young.

The man grunts gruffly. "'parently there's some ruckus with some clowns callin' themselves 'Death Eater's'." The snort is mocking. "The only thing they'll be eatin' is my foot when I get a hold of them."

Albus Dumbledore and his infamous twinkle eyes smiles,

"You're too soft to be doing that, Alastor."

The man with hard rugged features gives Albus Dumbledore a sharp look.

"If these 'Death Eater's' create anymore trouble there won't be anyway for my 'softness' to take affect."

Albus Dumbledore smiles solemnly,

"Come, let's have some tea. I have some information you might find useful about these 'clowns'.

------------------

"Alastor. Be reasonable. We can't afford to take these measures. We have to--"

"Be murderers."

"Alastor--"

He bangs his cane on the floor with a deep thump that resounds through the room.

"Listen here, Shacklebolt. Did I _ever _train you to kill? No. You kill if you have to. Otherwise, do what you're paid for and bring justice before the court of law."

The table full of people around him look down at the table.

But Alastor 'Mad Eye' Moody is staring at a boy no older than he was when he found his reason to become an Auror. As he stares at this boy with the green eyes that bind, he thinks silently to himself that one day he might tell that boy the story behind it all.

Until then,

"Bring them back alive. Only a monster can kill another monster and think it's alright."

He thinks of a dozen men… their faces memorized and their names on a sheet of paper he keeps locked in a drawer.

------------------------

When Auror Moody walks into the door of the Lecture Hall instant attention is focussed on him. The eyes of every student is seeking his attention…

He stands up on the podium and says in a loud gruff voice the opening lines that he'll remember all his life,

"If you're hear to take notes on how to kill a man, get out. There is no room for people who think that they can justify homicidal tendencies by saying that they had permission… if you kill a man, you should suffer the consequences. Just like everyone else would. Be it in self-defence, or whatever.

Kill only when there is absolutely no choice." He takes a deep breath. His powerful presence concentrated on this line.

"Kill them, and they will get off, without a thought to whatever it is that they did. Punish them, and just perhaps they will get what they just deserve."

--------------------

A hand is on his shoulder as he tries to ease himself out of the bathtub.

"Ease off, Shacklebolt. I'm not an invalid." His voice is gravely and little more than a growl.

The big dark hand moves in a soothingly motion over the badly scarred shoulder and the chest.

"I'm off duty for now."

He would yell at this idiot for bothering him… however he sighs and leans back. Watching as the rather big Auror takes a cloth and smoothes it over his relatively unscarred chest.

The most prominent scar being just underneath his ribs. Faded and old.

He leans into the back of the bathtub. Accepting without much of a grumble to soft kiss placed upon his jagged collarbone.

-------------------

They sat in relative peace before the storm. Both of the men sipping they're tea. One of the men has it bitter whilst the other has a slight lemon taste to his.

"May I ask you a question, Alastor?" The peace has broken by the soft voice.

"What."

"Why don't you ever just 'finish the job' so to speak?"

The man with his freshly scarred face… a chunk of his nose is now missing, says nothing.

"Alastor?"

"I've always been one of those people who can't look at a man and wonder what the hell he did to end up like that. When I was a lad I thought of the drunks on the street, the bag ladies that had nowhere to go…

Now I wonder that of the men who think they can achieve anything with this so-called War of theirs."

He looks at the blue eyes across from his. Trying to see if he understands.

"It's one thing to kill a man, Albus. It's another to have to kill them and remember their face, name and everything in between."

--------------------

When he lies in bed and has his body covered by the big body of Kingsley Shacklebolt. The way that the mattress moves underneath during the duration of their activities… he feels the hands on his thighs caressing where the deep inhumane smooth cuts into his left leg and end abruptly into thin air…

He reaches up and runs his hands down the back of the finely chiselled body before he flips them over and takes over the control that is so rightfully his.

-----------------

Alastor Moody is perhaps known for his compassion on 'bringing them in alive'. But what they don't know, is that he keeps them more than alive…

He keeps their names on a parchment in drawer along with the newspaper articles that show their names and he remembers whether or not they had kids. What their names are what they want to be.

What they don't know is that he still thinks about them.

Long after they've gone.

---------------------


	2. In Children's Eyes

**A Stranger's Life Series.** Based on Alastor Moody.

1. What They Don't Know.

2. Title: In Children's Eyes.

Rating:

Pairing: AM/KS

Summary: Second in the **_'A Stranger's Life'_** Series.

------------------------------

There are specks of white lint lying on his grey vest.

It's an old vest that's seen much better days… The old threads are falling out of place. It was once a deep blue but now a faded out grey.

"Are you ready?" He's a man of a big stature. His broad chest is strong and his shoulders allow him to seem invincible.

The older man with the one leg sits on the bed.

"Help me with these damned buttons."

The big strong fingers take over where the older parchment white and wrinkly ones had been.

A quick kiss on the lips.

"Come on, let's hurry."

---------------------------------

When he's about 5 years old he noticed a problem with his family. Unlike everyone around them, his parents were always after the 'smelly stuff'… his Mommy would try to kiss him but she would lose her balance and fall to the floor laughing.

His father would throw his oldest sister up in the air and then forget her as she came down.

But they weren't mean like some of the parents. The ones that would hit and yell at the kids.

Yet the biggest problem was, was that they weren't around really. And when Mommy was home she would be sick in her room all the time…

----------------------------

Alastor Moody is sick of sitting in on funerals, memorials or any such things.

He's been to too many during his long life.

But he'll sit there respectfully, his flask bumping on his side as he shifts in his seat. Kingsley sitting right beside him, his hand on Alastor's good knee.

Moody will try to sit still, but lately his hip has started to bother him.

He wants to look around himself to see who really misses the body that they are casting off today. Moody could lie and say that he knew the man intimately, with his short blonde hair.

But from what he can recall he doesn't even know his name.

He's there as a sign of respect. As well as Shacklebolt's constant nagging.

-----------------------------

There's a little boy no older than seven years old playing with his baby brother outside. The girls are inside cooking and cleaning with their father. The house seems cold and forbidding.

The shingles on the roof are falling off and the paint is cracking and pealing. There are broken chips into the window panes and the actual windows seem to be vulnerable to breaking.

But the little boy plays with his baby brother, pulling out flowers or just finding some things to play make- believe with.

He doesn't listen to the silence around him.

After all Mommy went to a better place where she will stop being sick all the time.

------------------------

Alastor Moody can see the line of family that is grieving for they're dead son, father, and husband. He can see that it is all they can do not to break down in front of people… either screaming at them for lack of sincerity or crying that this wasn't supposed to happen.

He can see the child who must be very young. 'Round four or five judging by his size.

Moody's never agreed with bringing children to these things. It's something they will remember the rest of their lives, and still won't understand even when they do understand what it was for.

As he and Kingsley move up to the line to shake the hands of the aggrieved he makes sure to keep eye contact. After all he knows that by looking at his battle scars and such this family will see that perhaps their beloved may have gotten off worse after all.

--------------------------

When they are inside that big church he can't help but stare at the high ceiling and the odd carpeting. Soft like his Mommy's favourite dress.

He clings tightly to his older sister's hand. She moves closer to him as they walk. He's only seven but she's nine, so he feels really safe with her. Cassy, the beautiful scholar of the family… she's going to be going off to Muggle school because she's not going to be a witch like Mommy or their cousins.

His other sister and brother are on the other side of him. Jacob is being held by Morgan, who's already at Hogwarts… she wants to be a Quidditch player.

Jacob is too small to be doing anything, and all the big people around them are walking really fast so he has to be held.

The little boy doesn't like this place. It feels like the woods when he snuck out there without permission, only more worse.

He's reminded of the pressure on his hand and he steps as close as he possibly can to Cassy.

------------------------

He hates the part that comes with waiting before they bring the coffin to lower.

The awkward waiting around before the men start to walk down with it on their shoulders. Kingsley is one of the men who's been asked to do it along with other Aurors.

Alastor had a feeling that if he didn't have a wooden leg he would've been asked to do it as well.

Thank God, for small miracles.

Though now that he thinks of God he thinks it odd that they did this in a church. It's odd because most wizards and witches are not at all religious. Even if they are they tend to lean to the pagan side of it.

But it is a wooden house of God with it's standard cross on the top.

Definitely a church.

-----------------------------

When the little boy is about ten and waiting with anticipation for his Hogwarts letter he can see there's something odd about his younger brother.

He knows what Cassy is now. A squib and that she can't do magic and that's why she goes to Muggle school. He feels sad for her but at the same time he's too excited about being wizard to think about it too much.

And he knows that he's going to get it. He's done magic with his sister Morgan to see if he was magic. And he did it!

But it's Jacob that he worries about.

His younger brother spends too much time inside and when he comes out he goes straight to that church down the road. He doesn't think this is healthy, but when he's asked to go to church with his younger brother he goes.

But he wonders why his younger brother only ever asks him and Cassy. Cassy doesn't usually go because she thinks it's oppression to women… the ten-year-old boy doesn't have a clue as to what that means.

However what bothers him most is that box he sits in and tells all the bad things he does to a man with long funny robes. The little boy likes robes but he doesn't like the man's robes.

"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned…" He hates this. But he does it for Jacob who only talks to him and Cassy.

He does it because his little brother won't be going to Hogwarts for a while yet and will only have Dad and Cassy around to play with him.

---------------------------

Kingsley comes down with the rest of them.

Moody doesn't focus on him. Instead he looks at the polished cedar of that coffin. The rings and the design of the knots…

He personally doesn't see the point of having a coffin like that. Even the cost of it must have been a lot.

He thinks cremation or even just a burial at sea is better than wasting land by putting dead bodies everywhere.

Yet as a sign of respect he won't say anything about it.

Instead he'll walk with the people behind the company of men to the grave pit where they will ceremoniously lower the coffin.

He'll stand here and watch as there are words from a priest and the coffin is lowered with roses falling on it…

------------------------

The little boy is now twelve. He's in Hufflepuff and considered one of the best pupils in his year. He's great at all his classes and even Professor Dumbledore, the new Transfigurations teacher thinks he'll go far.

But there's a snag… he's a bit too paranoid about things going wrong that he tends to overdo things. Such as when in DADA if they are doing exercise drills he'll make his hexes a bit too strong for the teacher to anticipate from a Second Year.

It's summer time and in a month or so he's going to be in Third Year. He can't wait. Though Morgan's going to be in Sixth Year and not very willing to help him as much as last year. But that's OK, he's not a nark and he'll fight his own battles.

Besides, maybe Morgan will help him look after Jacob. He'll only be a First Year, and he's not a fighter like everyone else in the family.

So they'll both help him out.

Cassy's worried because Dad hasn't been home for a long while. Morgan said not to worry, and he's caught Jacob praying to that God of his.

Jacob only speaks to Cassy now. He's stopped speaking to anybody but her.

-----------------------

The old man with his wooden leg and electric blue eye, positively hates it when the company from a parade such as this breaks up to go separate ways. The way that the family stays behind as everyone else shuffles off to do what they had perhaps originally planned.

Most of all he hates the way that Shacklebolt has to stay and give his deep condolences for the thousandth time.

He wants to yank on that starched collar and pull that man away from the people who should be left alone.

Instead he'll stand there. Leaning on a cane and nodding when they look over at him.

-------------------

He's seventeen and about to be apprenticed early for the Auror training… he's thrilled because he can't believe that it's taken him so little time, but a hell of an effort to get to this point.

But he got all his NEWTs and did the qualifications for Auror training so he's all set to do it.

When he's seventeen he also finds out what happened to his family.

He gets a letter from Cassy, who moved to North America where she travels around as a nurse to the old and sick. She stays at their house and works primarily with stroke patients on regaining the feeling in their legs and arms.

In the letter he also finds out that the Jacob, after he ran off when he got his letter to Hogwarts, spent time in Catholic school from where he would eventually go into the priesthood. Cassy's been paying for the school for Jacob. He plans on going to Africa doing missionary work.

Morgan he knows went to knows went to China to work in some Potions she had planned to make for an advancement in Healing Potions. However, no one has heard from her for over a year so it's hope that she's still around.

In the letter Cassy asks for a reply, asking him whether or not she should declare their father dead and give him a proper burial.

He replies, no.

--------------------------------------

His hip has started to really hurt him. Even when they finally walk into the door of his little house.

He goes to sit down on his chair.

"Get me some rum, will you?" He brings up his hand and runs it over his face. He's gotten a stinging headache and a back that feels like iron weights have been smashed on it.

Kingsley brings it to him. Setting it beside him as he starts to run his big dark hands through Alastor's whitening hair. The dark fingers travel down to the scars on the face…

"Don't overdo it Alastor." His deep barrelling voice grates on Moody's nerves sometimes.

"Don't like it? Get the hell out of my house." He growls this out.

They both know he doesn't mean it.

Sometimes.

-------------------------------------


	3. Nothing to Tell

A Stranger's Life:

1. What They Don't Know.

2. In Children's Eyes.

b 3. Nothing To Tell. /b 

---------------------------------------

He can hear the whisper of snores on the back of his neck.

It chills him when Kingsley sleeps curled around him… there is something he finds rather disturbing about the forced contact. The contact that has him wishing it was possible that he were a lonely old man once more.

But at the same time he knows that he would never really want such a thing.

He lies awake at stares at the ceiling, wondering when the morning sun is going to come up. Perhaps when it does the itch from where his left leg used to be will finally go away.

Kingsley shifts closer to him. His muscular body becoming tight around Alastor.

He thinks that this is wrong of him. To be so old with no future with Kingsley, after all he once had a I future /I but it has become the present.

His gnarled face is barely warm on the side facing out. His neck is growing warmer as the breaths stay just as shallow. He can feel the naked skin on his back…

He remembers something he once said when he asked himself about why he was with Shacklebolt,

"He may not be my First Love, nor the True Love but he is still my love."

--------------------------------- ---------

The first person he could honestly say captured his heart with the essence of their soul was a girl of rather unfortunate looks. She could not honestly be described as beautiful in the conventional sense. Or even pretty with her pudgier stature and acne scarred skin…

But she was the personification of elegance and intellect. Charming in the way she spoke and her dark brown eyes took in everything that was around her.

She entranced Alastor when he was sixteen with the sly movement of her tongue across words that he knew but had to think before replying.

"I wanted to ask you Alastor, where do you go to school?" A smile with naturally straight teeth, the one saving feature. "Our paths never cross without it being summer."

Alastor laughs loudly,

"It's a school for the idiots."

She smiles with questions unasked in her eyes.

------ -----

"Old Man… get over here." Kingsley's growl is ridiculous to him. He sometimes thinks of it as the boy's growl of I arousal /I , though he has yet to understand what the boy is aroused about.

He turns and looks at Kingsley's dark face with his big eyes that are nearly black. Alastor can imagine how much of an idiot he looks with his own flush and slightly bright eyes.

He can't say he's not a little flattered that Kingsley wants this more than he's able to actually give the younger man.

But he says nothing but the soft words that are forced out of his mouth as they continue on in a carnal embrace.

--------------- -------

It was her voice that first had him on his knees wondering at such a creature's existence.

How could it not?

The soft feminine cultured sound of it. Coming from such a face whose jaw was too strong and meant to be a man's. The way that the soft accents of some letters seemed different, yet not foreign.

Her name was Marissa Sankey and she was obviously an intellect of her own devise.

"I would love to be a writer. But Alastor, a writer is a dreamer who never really surfaces in the real world. They write stories that no one will read."

"People read!" He's shot out a bit of the apple he was chewing; she flicks it off her vest with an irritated look.

"No they don't. People are after TVs and whatever media will come out in the future. No one reads the classics of the Greek philosophers or the artists of the Renaissance periods. They don't even read Freud for chrissakes and the man spoke mainly of sex!

Instead they read this drabble on aliens who are gods, or whatnot. Do they bother even forming their own ideas on how to apply religion into their lives anymore? No, instead they make even more clubs for self mutilation or pagan worship in order to create some hobby in their life—"

"Oh come on. The way you're going on you'd think that the end of the world is upon us. People are not getting more ignorant. If anything they are changing into a world of more promis—"

She throws her head back as she laughs.

"You don't actually believe that do you? Because if you do then I dearly underestimated your knowledge of the world today,

What of the wars going on in the south? Or the ones going on in the west? East? Or the war that goes on still hmmm? What of that?"

She stirs the coffee in front of her.

"We are heading towards a destruction of our own. The extermination of the human species will be completely of our own fault. The reason? I believe that once we made that bomb, the one that fell on Japan along with the new diseases coming out of Africa everything bad is going to be the product of our own arrogance. To rule over each other without a thought to what is happening to the earth on which we stand.

We only have this earth to stand on. We are not space people who can walk on Mars and Jupiter. No, we breathe oxygen and eat animals who should be our predators."

Alastor placed his hand on hers. She looked up at him and smiled.

"On a brighter note, in a couple of years we will have a man stand on the moon, so perhaps we will walk on Mars and Jupiter yet."

----------------- --------

Alastor Moody remembers when he taught Kingsley, perhaps less than a decade ago. The boy being the only Ravenclaw.

There was nothing that really stood out about this dark skinned boy with his brilliant white teeth. He had great grades, but so did all the pupils who entered into the Auror training.

It is not an occupation that one enters without having a dozen or so brains to rub together.

Yet, as Alastor would find out, the boy was fast on his feet and could trick a dragon if he had to. With the seemingly soft demeanour of a nice shy boy.

Shy. He snorts about it now. His body aching in ways that it should have only done so in his youth.

"Hmm…" The kiss on his neck is wet.

The fingers twining themselves in his own.

--------------------- ---

He never got the chance to do more than kiss her.

Though she never seemed comfortable with touch. She tensed when he would try to hold her.

He laughed about it.

"What don't you trust me?"

She had eyes that spoke thoughts that he could never hear.

"What happened to your father?"

He couldn't look her in the face.

"I don't like secrets Alastor." The softness of her voice grated on him.

"There's nothing to tell, Marissa. Leave it be."

He would find out later on in life that she actually became a politician. He voted for her without even looking at the other candidates' names.

------------------- -----

"Stop it Shacklebolt." His hip is acting up again and the moron has decided to start rubbing it.

It only serves to make it worse.

"Alastor, you should start taking those potions again." The concern in the voice is more than Alastor can abide with,

"Just be quiet about that already?"

He hates meddlesome people.

--- --------

He had affairs when he was younger.

None of them at all lasting. He found of all of them no one could stand up to the pointedly to the feeling of completeness he had felt with Marissa.

He did have a lover who could make his heart beat faster than a hummingbird flies with desire.

Thorton Cawthorne. A man of considerable reputation in the Wizarding World these days. He had the rare talent at making money.

Alastor found that the man could create goldmines out of a galleon investment. When they first were together it was when Alastor had been training for his Auror certificate and well into the fit handsome young man of his youth.

The sort of attractiveness that had the women at his feet begging for marriage and the men no strings attached intimacies.

That was what Cawthorne offered.

"But who is to say that this is wrong? Two men bedding down together, is it not something that has been happening for thousands of years?"

Cawthorne was a man who liked to think of himself as an intellect. The rich tend to do that.

It was an affair that would end with Alastor butted aside for a trophy wife as the fortune grew and the thought of such scandal became grotesque.

They remained good friends. Alastor being the one with whom Cawthorne would bleed out his secrets to.

In fact Cawthorne would be the one who bought Alastor his fake eye and private hospital bills in the later years.

----------- --------

He supposes that the only good thing about this relationship is that it is an Auror who eats beside him for breakfast is that he doesn't have to be so paranoid.

He finds himself too tired as of late to be worried whether or not when he goes to take the rubbish out he's going to be Stupefied and thrown into a box for nearly ten months.

The tiring thing is that he's expected to help out with this new war with his knowledge and experience.

He remembers the things that Marissa once said to him.

"There will always be war. No one ever learns."

Ironic that he would have Cawthorne who found profit off of wars, and Kingsley who will find solace.

Ironic that those two lovers would follow throughout his life, either as a friend or pupil.

Yet he would have married a woman who was both a Muggle and cynic on humanity. He would have married a woman who walked out of his life after only a two summers of knowing each other.

Ironic that he would fight for everything in his life.

But he would never fight for her.


	4. Until You've Walked In His Shoes

A Stranger's Life:

What They Don't Know

In Children's Eyes.

Nothing To Tell

4. Until You've Walked In His Shoes

---------------- --

There is a cold leading from the window. The pane is splintering…

He keeps meaning to fix it but it never gets set to the most important of priorities. He could do it now, but that would involve him having to remember the right spell that wouldn't have the window breaking or some wrong Transfiguration.

He doesn't feel like getting into all that right now.

All he wants is a quiet evening left to his own thoughts.

Thoughts that are half formed and of little matter.

------------- -----

There is something about the past that allows one to reflect and forever remain in either humiliation or awe of a moment no one else in Time will ever think of again.

Like how when he was ten he would think of all the ways he could save everyone in his family in acts of heroism. Each one more melodramatic than all the others.

He even made Cassy and Morgan swear that _only_ he would be able to save them.

Of course by the time he was thirteen he didn't think of it like that. Instead he thought of becoming an Auror and saving all sorts of people, but mostly catching the bad guy.

When he was sixteen and idealism came on strong to everyone around him. He developed his own idealisms.

To be honest he never really forgot them.

Alastor wanted there to be justice for both the people on either sides of the lines. Because if anything there were two sides to each story, one being considered lawful and the other that may not be lawful but still is something of value to some people.

In fact that was what made women equal to men, races equal to each other… everything that had to do with peace and equality through protests and unlawful conducts was worth fighting for!

He would be an Auror. But he would be the Auror who fought for his fellow man in efforts to create equality for everyone.

--------- ---

He thinks that there might be something wrong with him.

Perhaps he finally grew up and stops thinking along the lines of fighting for what you believe in and fighting to stops something that is evil.

He's nearly sixty and it took him 20 years to stop thinking that everyone had justifications for their actions.

He has lost a leg, an eye skin all over his body over the years. But it still took him a very _long _time to stop living in his past dreams of peace and equality.

What are you suppose to do when you forget how to dream and all you think about is how you don't believe in your old dreams anymore?

---- -----

The first man he ever caught when he an Auror in training was a werewolf who had been trying out a form of potion that would render someone the ability to be a werewolf and functional in society.

Alastor demanded that they let him go.

"He killed someone!"

"His regret is great an obvious. The family has sent money to pay for a funeral to the grieving family." Alastor is not a man to be cowed by his superiors.

Langley throws up his arm and goes into a tirade of how he's going to deal with Alastor.

Alastor smiles inwardly, hoping that the werewolf is let go to make headway in research that may one day be finalized.

---- -------

"Constant Vigilance!" That's what he says when the Order asks him what advice he has for them going on to the field.

They roll their eyes and Kingsley laughs.

"We need more that that Mad-Eye." Says the Weasley with a twin.

"Keep a wand in your hand. Don't drop it, don't do anything but have it ready. Cast Alert Charms every three minutes and keep a Pepper Up Potion in your back pocket. Expect the worse, and don't panic no matter what you do. Clear heads are what in the end make the decisions that will save your lives." It's short and precisely what they need. After all Alastor should know, he's done this job for nearly his entire life.

The Order nods and looks like they did need that small tiny lecture.

Alastor can't help but think that most of them will panic, just like most of his students did twenty years ago. One out of seven would keep their heads clear, all the other suffered greatly from their affliction.

---- --------

The first time he killed a man Alastor never thought his heart would beat again.

"You had to do it. After all he was coming after you with the Killing Curse first." His partner at the time is trying to calm him down.

He's been an Auror for six months. The first man he kills is one of the first of a long line of Death Eaters.

He doesn't pay attention to his partner. Just concentrates on the name Joseph Parkinson, a man who has a son just starting at Hogwarts.

He writes down his name and cuts out the obituary from the Prophet and places it in book that will end up with more names and more obituaries.

---- -------

He pours Kingsley some of the stew that he's just made.

The boy is strangely quiet today.

He starts to growl out something to make the boy talk to him when Kingsley gets up. "I'm going to bed."

He follows Kingsley and stands there.

"Ron Weasley disappeared today."

Alastor nods. "Where is Potter and the girl?"

"They disappeared two days ago." Kingsley's voice dies by the end.

"Is this because they are children, or is this because you knew them as children?" Alastor trained with peers his age, could've died with them. But instead he lived to teach and send their children off to their deaths.

---- -----------

When he kills a woman he finally shatters his dream of peace.

But he can still believe in equality. For this shows that there is equality in genders and races with these vagrants and fresh gang of Death Eaters that are starting to pop up everywhere.

"She tried to kill me. She nearly killed my partner. She had killed three children." Every justification for his actions prove that the only justifications he can make are for himself, nobody else.

There's a scar on his cheek that he can see in the bathroom mirror. There's a small nip on his chin.

"She probably killed more than that…"

---- --------

Alastor doesn't know whether or not be sorry about how he is now.

Sometimes when he looks at Molly he wants to console her and tell her that her youngest son will come back. That wait and all three of those children will come walking through the door.

Reality most likely would be, that the family would be blessed to get even the body found.

This is a War.

Nothing in war is ever done for those who need consolation.

Never.

----- -----

By the time he's been asked to teach younger people he's been disillusioned too much to find he has still has dreams.

Instead he teaches by virtue.

Instead he watches with envy the students who come in with the dreams he once believed in.

Only to feel sorry when he watches them fall disillusioned just as he did.

When Cassy comes to England to spend some time with him she says over dinner,

"Sweetheart, it's not good to go through life feeling nothing. Dreams are what the sense of purpose. What are ambitions but dreams? Even that Dumbledore you talk about must dream."

---- ---------

Alastor finds that he's tired of envying those who still have dreams.

He finds Kingsley's dreams of righteousness tiresome and irritating. He once found Albus' annoying and tried to talk sense into the man.

He sometimes stares at where his leg used to be and runs his fingers over it feeling what are the scars deeply inputted in his skin.

He remembers his dreams. But more than ever he remembers the reality of such dreams.

There is no such thing as peace.

But he supposes you could still fight for it.


	5. Author's Note

Right now my sister is borrowing my laptop so the updates for this fic will be coming in maybe two weeks or so. This one I'm writing directly on the computer so I don't write it on paper in rough draft.

Considering how I wrote it, it may be applicable to put in Deathly Hallows depending on what happens of course!

It also has 7 parts, that hopefully will be finished in the next month or so seeing as how I actually have time to do it.

I'll delete this on next _actual _posting.


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